Film review: High & Low – John Galliano documentary a story of obsession, addiction and excess

Kevin Macdonald's new documentary, High & Low: John Galliano explores the rise and fall of the fashion designer

★★★★☆

Arguably the most inventive fashion designer of his generation, John Galliano was at the peak of his powers when, in 2010, he was filmed outside a Paris bar delivering anti-Semitic abuse. 

Kevin Macdonald’s documentary, High & Low – John Galliano (12A), opens with the grainy footage of Galliano’s antisemitic slurs before taking us back to 1980s London to chart the Gibraltar-born tyro’s irresistible rise through the ranks of haute couture, via Givenchy and Dior, to become synonymous with the cutting edge of fashion, his designs fuelled by escapism, fantasy and a fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte, and worn by the era’s supermodels, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss included.

It’s an absorbing story of obsession, addiction and excess, but while all the glitz and glam is as flamboyantly dazzling as you might expect, the real story is the disgraced Galliano’s long crawl back towards rehabilitating his reputation as ‘fashion’s greatest success story’.

Now rather grizzled and careworn as he speaks directly to camera, Galliano is roguish, inarticulately contrite and frequently perplexed as he attempts not merely to explain his actions, but to understand them himself.

(cinema release)